I have been travelling a lot recently and am amazed at the stoicism of the majority of us sheep who allow ourselves to be herded and corralled to the extent that currently seems necessary to ensure our individual and national safety.

I am writing this in New Zealand. A quick calculation has revealed that in order to get to Dunedin I have spent more combined time queuing to be scanned, interrogated, vetted and patted down than I spent on three of the four flights it took me to get here in 36 zombie-fying hours.

Only the 13 hour leg across Australia trumped the security lines. You would be tempted to think that they really would rather you hadn’t come there to spend your money. As you totter brain dead into immigration halls in the USA, Australia or New Zealand (my most recent experiences) you will invariably behold a roped snake of leaden footed, exhausted travellers shuffling through seven or eight parallel lines of the comatose to present themselves at one of the couple of desks available for non-residents. It is tempting to believe that they constructed a facility with dozens of desks to underline the fact that they’re not going to open them all for the likes of you. They know when the planes are coming in and how many people will be on them, people whose first impression of their country might be the treatment they receive on arrival. Two hours spent inching forward in despair is not the way to show how much they value the dollars we are about to spend in their country.

I sincerely hope that our own border security system offers a better service to those entering the UK. As residents of course we don’t see how our visitors are treated. I just get the ‘Oh you’ve come back, have you? Ah well never mind, on your way!’ And all that technology that was supposed to speed things up, finger print and eye scanners, digital passport readers has inevitably had the opposite effect. Despite their protestations to the contrary, all those innovations are designed to make ‘their’ lives easier, not ours. We know that in order to safeguard our safety and security all the checks are essential. They could just be done much quicker and more efficiently.

I suppose the simple answer is that we should all stay at home.